Necromancy at it's finest. Use some of the most powerful black cards ever printed to dump magic's best creatures directly into the graveyard and swiftly reanimate them to annihilate your opponent(s). Use either Entomb or Buried Alive to place your creature of choice into the graveyard as early as possible, with the help of Lotus Petal and Dark Ritual. Other options for getting a reanimation target into the graveyard include using Cabal Therapy on yourself if your creature of choice is in your opening hand, or using the draw > discard > pass turn strategy if you are on the draw. If you have a discard spell in hand and suspect your opponent is packing disruption, it's advisable to hit them with either Duress or Cabal Therapy before attempting to tutor a creature into your graveyard. The deck isn't super resilient to disruption, but it is capable of very explosive plays and relatively consistent when you mulligan properly. An example of our ideal first turn play would be something like:
Swamp > Dark Ritual > Duress/Cabal Therapy opponent to discard counterspell or removal > Entomb placing Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur or Iona, Shield of Emeria in the graveyard > Reanimate
It's difficult to deal with a resolved first turn Iona, and in a multiplayer setting, Jin-Gitaxias gives everyone a single turn to answer before going into topdeck mode, while drawing you the cards you need to continue reanimating threats.
Another strong synergy is using Buried Alive for Sharuum the Hegemon and Magister Sphinx, reanimating Sharuum to return the Magister with her and set your opponent's life total to 10, and then swinging for the win the following turn with the two 5/5 fliers.
The suite of creatures is designed to combat many different types of decks you may face, and should be tailored to your individual meta. Spirit of the Night is an old school favorite of mine and definitely not a competitive choice. For maximum effectiveness I would consider the following swaps:
Avacyn, Angel of Hope instead of Spirit of the Night
Griselbrand instead of Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur
Mikaeus, the Unhallowed instead of 1x Swamp
I have also been considering working the Mikaeus, the Unhallowed
+
Rot Hulk
+
Rot Hulk
synergy into the deck. It gives you 15 power worth of hard to block creatures, which is split between three bodies and is more resilient to removal than the Magister Sphinx + Sharuum the Hegemon
synergy.
